Police Take Course To Get Tougher On Drunken Drivers

Driven by some sobering statistics, 19 police officers from the Lehigh Valley took part in a course in Easton this week to learn more about identifying drunken drivers.

And to help those officers with their training, several city and Northampton County employees and other selected people volunteered to get intoxicated - or close enough to it to make telling the difference a little difficult.

The Standardized Field Sobriety Test School, sponsored by the state Department of Education, involves three tests police can administer to motorists who are stopped. If they are handled properly, the tests are supposed to be reliable enough for an officer to recognize the difference between someone with a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent and .10 percent.

In Pennsylvania, a person is legally considered drunk if the blood-alcohol level is .10 percent or higher.

Gene Stull, the lead instructor for the course, said reliable tests in borderline cases are essential. "If someone's falling-down drunk when you get them out of the vehicle, you don't need a test."

But he said a person with a reading of .05 percent alcohol in the blood can no longer drive safely, and at .10 percent, "nobody's a safe driver, with no exceptions."

Stull is a man who can rattle off the statistics that make the crusade against drunken drivers a worthwhile one. Among them:

- Nationwide, 50,000 people are killed each year in traffic accidents, and 50 percent of those fatalities are alcohol-related.

- When single-car accidents at night result in a death, alcohol is involved more than 92 percent of the time.

The people who sacrificed their sobriety yesterday to help train local police started drinking three hours before the testing began and were monitored closely. Weighing between 110 and 205 pounds, the volunteers drank between 5 and 15 ounces.

"We do not want them to appear intoxicated," Stull said. "We want them to look and feel sober."

The standardized tests are based on "thousands and thousands of cases," Stull explained, and test balance and the ability of the eyes to focus. One has a person walk a straight line and turn, another has the subject stand on one leg, and the third tests eyes for uneven movements when following an object such as a pen or flashlight.

A certain point value is assigned to each test, and points are deducted when, for example, a person has to extend his or her arms while balancing on one leg.

Capt. Alvin Fairchild of the Easton Police Department said he eventually would like all of his men trained, but "primarily this time we're looking at those making the most drunk driving arrests - the ones that use it the most." Those officers typically work late evening and overnight shifts.

Besides Easton, officers fromWilson, Freemansburg, Catasauqua and Northampton, as well as Forks, Palmer and Bethlehem townships, took part in the three-day course. Each of the the officers had to score 80 percent on the written test and 80 percent on the subject tests to be certified. "We're trying to maintain a situation where the people have a very high level of proficiency," Stull said.

Although four officers failed to score 80 percent on the written exam, all who progressed to the final stage passed.

Before the officers were graded by Stull and fellow instructor Mike Wahmann, the blood-alcohol level of the five volunteers ranged from a high of .137 to a low of .075, as determined on a breath-monitoring machine called an intoxilyzer.

Although all of the volunteers might have appeared intoxicated, Stull said the tests are supposed to weed out those who are not. He said they "take away bias, take away prejudice" because officers are "taught to give the instructions identically, taught to score identically."

"The only purpose of these tests is to decide whether to arrest or not. It doesn't say he's going to be guilty." More concrete evidence for that, he said, is gathered "in conjunction with breath testing and blood testing."

Before officers received their final evaluations, the intoxilyzer was used again to determine the alcohol level remaining in the blood of the volunteers. The readings ranged from .06 to .111 a full 3 1/2 hours after their last drink.

And yes, arrangements were made where needed for the volunteers to get home without driving.